Thread: does reality checks throughout the day really help?

I think what makes the difference between the rcs passing to your dreams is the amount of rcs, you did that day. If i do between 40-50+ in one day, i'm almost 100% sure to have an ld, but you can only do this about 3 days in a role because then it stops. i read on some thread here that another member ket changing the tecniques so that one technique didnt simply become habit. so thats how rcs work for me.

It worked for me when I was starting out. Now I just do need to.

Originally Posted by telaranrhiod walker

I think what makes the difference between the rcs passing to your dreams is the amount of rcs, you did that day. If i do between 40-50+ in one day, i'm almost 100% sure to have an ld, but you can only do this about 3 days in a role because then it stops. i read on some thread here that another member ket changing the tecniques so that one technique didnt simply become habit. so thats how rcs work for me.

I did one every like 5 mins for all of yesterday. And no LD yet.

Originally Posted by moe007

I did one every like 5 mins for all of yesterday. And no LD yet.

Today i wrote RC on my wrist. And everytime i saw it i did a RC. I ended up doing about 500 today? I dont know but i did ALOT.

Ill post tomorrow to see if it effected my dreaming.

That worked for me to end a dryspell, I hope it works for you.

I suspect RC's are a long term investment. According to LaBerge's books, it takes an average of 4-5 weeks to have your first LD, but after "a number of months", you could be having a lucid dream every night! I've been doing them 10-20 times a day since early November and after about 7wks straight of that, had a spontaneous lucid dream. Before that, I was doing them about 5 times a day in the winter, and maybe one a week the rest of the year, and was averaging about one spontaneous LD every other month. I'm gonna try to keep up the current level through the whole year and see if my LD rate increases.

I also agree with James, they are the basis for success with other techniques.

Also, I think it's possible to do too many. It exhausts one's attention and makes it more difficult to do them seriously. It's better if they're cued by something you resolve to notice during the day. This also increases attention to your surroundings and helps with prospective memory. I'm kinda absent minded, so one of my favorite times to do an RC is when I have a brain fart! Either way I win. Either I improve my memory (which helps with MILD), or I end up doing more RCs (which helps with MILD)!

I'll echo some of the above - for me, frequent reality checks seem to be a two edged sword. On the down side, doing frequent reality checks throughout the day conditions my mind to expect everything to check out (since it always does when I'm not dreaming). I might try to focus and really consider the "am I dreaming?" question, but doing it 10+ times a day you can't help but grow into the habit of expecting a certain outcome. Then when the reality check time comes in a dream (and it will, once you're accustomed to doing them frequently), your mind is already predisposed to find a 'normal' result, and jump through twisted logic hoops in order to convince itself that you're not dreaming.

On the positive side, frequent reality checks (especially in connection with dream signs) keep the notion of dream vs. reality in my mind, making it more likely that I'll consider the possibility when a dreamsign pops up in my dreams.

In the end, I keep doing reality checks and think they increase my chances for DILDs, but also understand that my mind will likely find a 'normal' outcome to these RCs within a dream because it's become conditioned to expect them from all the normal waking hour results.